My World of Music

by Tony Copple

When I was about 11, my father decided I needed education in music, and wrote a paper for me that introduced
me to the names of Bach, Beethoven and Louis Armstrong, plus many others. He also arranged for me to have piano
lessons for a couple of years. Today, music is my #1 passtime. I revere musicians and composers from Bob Dylan to John Rutter.
I created the Ottawa Beatles Site and play guitar and mandolin.

Find out if your child
has an interest in music and foster it. Don't risk her/his becoming a musical agnostic. Music could be his/her greatest pleasure in life.

I love good examples of all sorts of music from baroque to grunge, from
Michael Franti to Denyce Graves, from Nick Drake and Richard Thompson to John Newlands, from
Thelonius Monk to Philip Glass, from
Rachmaninoff via the Cascades to Nirvana, and contemporary Christian music from Keith
Green to Delirious?
And every year that passes I love them all more. I suspect that Martin Smith of Delirious? may be the the most important songwriter since Lennon and Kurt Cobain (who died 5 Apr 1994). In my view Brian Wilson is one of the greatest American composers.
Feel free to browse some of my collection. My
wife Laurie-Ann has kindly combined her large record collection
with mine, and I'm enjoying discovering new gems. Our tastes overlap
in many categories. I don't like death metal or most rap.

I play guitar and mandolin (electric and acoustic) and keyboard, and enjoy making music tremendously, having learned
piano accordion which taught me harmony, and transfered that knowledge to the guitar and keyboards.
I accompany Laurie-Ann (who sings like an angel) for Christian activities like the Alpha Course, and we play in a band called Kenosis.
In 2003 I started feeling the urge to actually write songs, which had been a log time dream. The first effort became the theme for Laurie-Ann's radio show "Window of Opportunity". Download the mp3 here of a version produced at Christmas 2003 by James Copple, featuring L-A on vocals and me on guitars. I wrote several more songs in 2003, many with words by inmates in Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, where I run an Alpha course.
On 31 Oct 08 Laurie-Ann and I performed for an Arts Night in Ottawa: see Kenbits Part 1 | Part 2. This was our most ambitious performance to date. All the tunes were mine and therefore SOCAN!

Music has the power to sooth, to stimulate, to change one's state, to
comfort, to make you cry, to make you laugh. It is surely something vital
to us! For me, it is a part of my soul, and I owe a debt to musicians that I can never repay. As Michael Franti sings: "everyone deserves music".

From my large collection I have learned that some
artists and composers
never disappoint me. I enjoy everything they ever did. I am not a good
critic of these musicians; I love them too much.

For Christian
music, a large part of our collections, we
visit Salem Storehouse, 1558 Merivale Rd, Ottawa, tel 727-0203

We both like to go to concerts, and fortunately live
about a mile from Scotiabank Place in Kanata where world-class artistes
perform frequently.

Stereo sound has always fascinated me as an engineer
and greatly increased the pleasure of listening.

Notice: Do you have any pop 78 rpm discs but your player long since
died? I have started a service
to transcribe
them to tape.

SOCAN - the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of CanadaSOCAN membership is free for music creators. If you start your own
publishing company, then you pay a one-time fee of $50 (and
perhaps more, if you have to do a Nuans name search for the company).
Consequently, any Canadian who creates music, should
be encouraged to join SOCAN. I registered with SOCAN in 2004, and by mid 2005 had earned royalties of $44.68 for my song "Window of Opportunity" played weekly on Window of Opportunity on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. Visit Socan Central MySpace site.

Listen to CDs on the WebJango - on-line 'radio station'Music Boulevard - release your music to the world.